Ask the Patriarch 173
Would you like to host “Techie Worlds”

from: George Richter

A discussion on this article has been opened in Debate and Discourse. Please feel free to add your own thoughts to the exchange of views via the contact page.

Expanding on Edwin Abbott’s “Flatland”, “Techie Worlds” examines the many strange Christian concepts, and shows how they are quite logical in contiguous geometrical worlds of Abbott’s kind.

The extended Flatland concept provides a logical basis for belief in God. As with belief in an “only material world”, it requires an act of faith. It is probably the next viewpoint that atheists and agnostics will have to denounce.

I plan to publish Techie Worlds on the web. Would you like to host it on your web site, the better to prepare your clientele to defend against such views?

The Patriarch replies:

George:

While I have never read Abbott's work, I am familiar with Flatland through a number of years of reading articles expanding on the concept in the Scientific American recreational mathematics columns. edited in the period by several brilliant people including Martin Gardner, Douglas Hofstadter, and A.K. Dewdney (who wrote extensively on his version of Flatland, calling it the Planiverse).

Given that you accept that "an act of faith" is required to provide a "logical basis for belief in God," I don't see this as something that atheists or agnostics need to worry about denouncing. As a generalized argument, it is not new.

On the other hand, if you can

a. prove that if God exists in an "n" dimensional world, then he must necessarily exist in an "n+1" dimensional world; and also

b. prove that God exists in a 2-dimensional world;

then you might be on to something - at least if you can also demonstrate that our universe must necessarily have an integer number of dimensions. [According to some thinkers, there may be a fractal element to the dimensionality to our universe, and this would mean that form of proof would not apply.]

If you want to provide something on your thoughts for publication in Talk Back, I would be happy to oblige. I would also be quite prepared to provide a link to your site once you find somewhere to host it.

As to your suggestion that I might host your site, there are numerous free hosting (advertising supported) services. I am not one of them. There are numerous relatively inexpensive services ($10 a month or less.) I'm not in that business either. Simply, I am not prepared to host your content at my personal expense. But I do appreciate your faith that you could trust me to do so fairly.

I wish you all the best with your pursuit and look forward to hearing more from you on this issue.